


oh now the fun begins

by pseudosocial_media



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (briefly) - Freeform, Beyonce - Freeform, Bitty is mom friend, Canon Compliant, Innuendo, Jack & his social issues, Language, Mentioned Kent Parson, Multi, My First Work in This Fandom, PDA, alcohol use, everyone's happy yay, kegster, mentioned Shitty Knight, reference to Epikegster 2k14, so far - Freeform, sometime year three, suggestive dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 11:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6609862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudosocial_media/pseuds/pseudosocial_media
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack never did go to parties all that often. Everyone knew why, but no one usually said anything. He was grateful for that, even if he could sometimes see on their faces the exact moment his past pushed its way to the front of their minds. Eventually, his absence was assumed as normal (or at least typical) and even the less sensitive people stopped bringing it up altogether.<br/>Now, he had graduated and when he walked into the Haus on that Saturday night as an alumnus and a Falconer, he got more stares than ever. He was used to the stares, and these weren’t even as unfriendly as many of the ones he faced regularly — these were more curious than hostile. He didn’t even have to do his best to get quick reads on these people — so far, none had tried to talk to him. So why was he sweating?</p>
<p>Late 2016, Jack goes to a Haus party to see Bitty and ends up catching up with everyone else, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh now the fun begins

Jack never did go to parties all that often. Everyone knew why, but no one usually said anything. He was grateful for that, even if he could sometimes see on their faces the exact moment his past pushed its way to the front of their minds. Eventually, his absence was assumed as normal (or at least typical) and even the less sensitive people stopped bringing it up altogether. 

At the one Haus party he’d attended before he graduated, he’d gotten stares. Then, people had teased him for doing the opposite of normal: choosing to join the fun instead of “hiding” in his room. He’d never seen what was so bad about staying in. He could read or watch documentaries or plan plays for their next game at his own pace. People were exhausting anyway — unpredictable and inscrutable. He’d never been any good at “reading” people the way his father was. They never made any sense. In the past, he’d spent barely five minutes at parties before needing to recharge. 

And then look what happened when he actually did attend. Kenny had shown up and… it was a mess. He knew that it had just been an awful coincidence, but it could have been enough to turn him off to any and all parties; forever. 

Now, he had graduated and when he walked into the Haus on that Saturday night as an alumnus and a Falconer, he got more stares than ever. There were familiar and strange faces all around him. He could hear some whispering. He waved tentatively, awkwardly, to one boy who was staring particularly intensely before lowering his hand, determined not to make a bad first impression. He shouldn’t have been as nervous as he was — he played in front of and talked to thousands of strangers both in person and through cameras every day. He was used to the stares, and these weren’t even as unfriendly as many of the ones he faced regularly — these were more curious than hostile. He didn’t even have to do his best to get quick reads on these people — so far, none had tried to talk to him. So why was he sweating? 

“Jaaack!” was all the warning he got before Chowder, flushed and clearly shit-faced, slammed into him and wrapped him in a bear hug that knocked more of the breath out of him than any check he’d taken in his professional career. Chowder had gotten more solid and bulkier over the summer, and the body slam shook him out of his head and back into the moment. Right, he was at the Haus. He was going to be seeing most of his old teammates for the first time in seven months. This was something he chose to do. This was somewhere he wanted to be, and somewhere he still belonged. 

“Hey, Chowder,” Jack responded, hugging him back and hoping he hadn’t left too long of a pause before reacting. He knew his social processing speed wasn’t the best sometimes — especially in overwhelming environments — and he’d left people hanging a little too long on more than one occasion. “How’ve you been?” 

“I’ve been _great!_ The tadpoles are really cool and we’ve been working awesome as a team and Bitty’s been really happy lately — like, happier and smiley-er than usual — so he’s been baking a lot and that’s really nice and he’s also been playing a lot of Beyoncé? Like, a lot a lot? And like, that song “Halo” in particular? And— and, oh! I got a total shutout in our last game!” 

“I saw! Good for you!” Jack separated himself from the vibrating boy and clapped him on the back. 

“You _watched_ our _game?_ ” 

“Of course I did! I always do, when I can.” 

Chowder looked stunned. He might have been making a high-pitched noise, but Jack wasn’t quite sure. Jack looked at him, bemused. He wasn’t sure why his watching was so exciting — Chowder was his old teammate. He knew him. Anyway, it seemed weird to him when he _wasn’t_ able to watch a Samwell game. 

Suddenly, Chowder slammed back into him and he had to grab the counter in order to keep his balance. It took Jack a moment to realize he’d gotten lost in thought again and Chowder was still reacting to what he’d said last. After regaining his balance, he accepted the hug and squeezed Chowder back. 

“Bro,” he heard right behind him, and he was able to re-separate himself from Chowder enough to turn and see Nursey, one arm draped around Dex. The latter gripped two solo cups, one in either hand. “You don’t call, you don’t write, and here you think you can just show up out of the blue?” Nursey slurred. 

“But I _did—_ ” Jack began to protest, before registering Nursey’s lopsided smile. “Oh.” Nursey was joking. He should have realized before. 

“Jesus. _Chill_ , Zimmermann. It’s all chill.” Nursey chuckled a little. Dex held out one of the solo cups for Jack to take. 

“Dex, I still don’t—” 

“I know,” Dex cut him off. “But this one’s had enough.” He indicated Nursey, and now that Jack looked he could see that he _was_ leaning a little heavily on Dex and he was being a little more… handsy than usual. 

“I didn’t know Nursey could _get_ drunk. He always seemed to really hold his liquor,” Jack commented, taking the cup and turning to pour its contents down the drain. It was green. It had to be tub juice. That was the only explanation. 

“You know, it’s rare, but it does happen. _Derek—_ ” 

Jack turned in time to see Nursey plant a sloppy kiss on Dex’s face, not quite hitting his lips. 

“Oh. You…? I didn’t—” Jack was stuttering as he struggled to process the new information. Was _everyone_ on the team— 

“That’s ‘cause you don’t keep up, Zimermann,” Nursey slurred, turning and grinning at Jack. A deep blush was making its way down from Dex’s face to his collar. “We have been a thing for a while now.” 

“I, um. Congratulations.” 

“Thanks, Jack,” Dex muttered. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Derek _really_ should be getting to bed.” Dex smiled up at Nursey and led him away towards the stairs. Jack hoped they’d make it up okay — Nursey was significantly larger than Dex and at that point was little more than dead weight. 

Jack turned back around to find himself alone — Chowder had rejoined the party at some point while he was talking with Nursey and Dex and he hadn’t noticed. He felt a little bad for essentially abandoning him like that, but he figured Chowder would find someone else to talk to soon enough. He was quite the social butterfly, and never truly had a dearth of subjects to discuss. 

“Hey, bro,” all of a sudden, Lardo was at his elbow. He pulled her into a hug. Her hair was growing back out — she had gotten an undercut, and brushed all her hair over to her right side. It looked good. 

“Hey, Lardo. How’ve you been?” 

“Things’ve been good. We miss you around here.” 

“I’ve been missing you all, too.” 

“How’s Providence?” 

“Beautiful. I’ve been busy with the new team and all, but I’ve been trying to take pictures wherever I can.” 

“I know. You’ve been sending them in the group chat.” 

“Yeah.” He’d been doing his best to keep his old teammates updated, even if he sometimes had trouble figuring out how to work his phone — he didn’t really like the new operating system updates. He’d sent the wrong photo a couple times and caught himself a couple more — there’d almost been a bad situation when he’d nearly shared a racy picture Bitty had sent him — but mostly he’d been getting the hang of it and everyone seemed to like his pictures so he’d kept sending them. 

Lardo studied his face. He could tell that she could tell that he was happy in Providence, even if he did miss her and Shitty and Bitty and everyone else on the team. She had a knack for detecting his complex emotions from just his face, even when he didn’t (or couldn’t) tell her what they were in as many words. 

Now, though, he wanted to have a conversation with her instead of just staring, so he asked, “How’s Shitty?” 

Lardo smiled. “He’s been good. We’ve been Skyping every day. He’s a little stressed, but the bro’s at Harvard. He’s allowed.” 

“Of course. And you two are official now.” 

“Yeah, we are.” Her smile got wider. Jack didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile so much or so wide. He smiled back. It was nice to see her happy. He knew she and Shitty had had a rough patch over the summer and at the beginning of the school year, but both Shitty and she had kept him updated and they’d pushed through it. Even if he wasn’t as good at reading people as she was, he had been able to tell she’d wanted this for a long time. He was glad she’d finally gotten it. “We haven’t been together much since graduation, but it’s amazing anyway.” 

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” And he did. He’d also only been able to see his boyfriend through Skype for the longest time, but just that it was his _boyfriend_ he was talking to made all the difference. 

Lardo recognized the same feeling in him, and smiled back. She opened her mouth to say something else. 

“Lardo!” came a voice from the crowd. A boy Jack didn’t recognize — probably one of the new frogs — pushed out of it and approached them. “Lardo, we’re making teams for beer pong and we need you to crush Tango and Ollie.” 

“I’ll be right there, Whiskey,” Lardo called after him. “I gotta go,” she said to Jack. “’Bye. Enjoy the party.” She hugged him again, patted his shoulder, then turned away and disappeared into the crowd. 

Jack stood for a moment, not knowing what to do with himself. He then returned to the counter and got himself a cup of water, at least to have something to hold. Even with his relatively little experience with parties, he knew he always felt less awkward with a cup in his hand. 

“Jack!” he heard from his left. He turned to see Holster and Ransom, arm in arm, approaching. He turned to accept Holster’s enthusiastic and aggressive hug, and then Ransom’s. 

“Jack, where have you been, bro?” Ransom started in immediately. 

“You like dropped off the face of the earth—“ Holster continued. 

“And then dropped back on and played some fucking _sick_ hockey but still didn’t keep in touch.” 

“Like, what the fuck, bro?” 

“We have practice every day, guys.” Jack knew it wasn’t much of an excuse, but he didn’t know what to say. Ever since they had come out and officially and publicly become boyfriends, Ransom and Holster had become even better at rhetoric and played off of each other incredibly well in every situation and thus were nearly impossible to beat in an argument. Knowing this even without having personally experienced it, Jack steeled himself for the inevitable onslaught of chirps. 

Surprisingly, Ransom nodded, sage. 

“We feel you, bro,” he said sympathetically. 

“Yeah, man,” Holster agreed. “We all know captaining is a lot of work but I’ll bet it’s nothing next to the big leagues.” 

“Hey, don’t sell yourselves short,” Jack chided. “I was surprised, too, but even with the tough competition and, frankly, ridiculous schedule, sometimes captaining was even harder than playing professionally has been.” 

“Well then, Jack-y boy,” Holster began just as Jack saw his misstep. 

“If we’ve been making time for you in our busy captain schedules,” Ransom continued seamlessly. 

“Why couldn’t you make time for us in yours?” Holster finished. Jack didn’t know how to respond. 

Fortunately, even as he struggled to come up with a retort chirp, he saw the good-natured smiles plastered on both of their faces and knew that they were cool. They both went to draw him in for a hug at the same time and they ended up in an awkward huddle that wasn’t quite graceful enough to be a group hug. 

“Um,” Jack said as they pulled apart, “have you two seen Bitty?” 

“Why?” Holster asked. “Are we not good enough for you?” 

“My dearest Holster,” Ransom jumped in, “I believe Jack here doesn’t love us nearly as much as we love him.” 

“Ransom, darling,” Holster replied, turning more towards his boyfriend, “I do believe you’re right. It’s a good thing we have each other.” 

“You’re adorable.” 

“You are, too, babe.” They kissed briefly, sidetracked. Jack coughed, still awkwardly standing there. Holster broke away and turned to him. “Your boy’s on the dance floor. Where else?” 

“Thank you,” Jack said. Ransom and Holster were already refocused on each other. Still feeling incredibly awkward, Jack set his cup down on the counter and sidled away. 

Jack knew where the “dance floor” would be. Although the Haus didn’t actually have any such thing, the early hours of every kegster would consistently see all the furniture in the living room pushed against the walls, to other rooms, or in some cases onto the front lawn. Thus, the “floor” would be created. Tonight, the floor was packed with bodies seeming to move as one — even more people were dancing than usual. 

Jack stared at the wall of bodies, at a loss. Bitty was somewhere in there, he knew, but the bodies in between them seemed impenetrable. He could neither see himself pushing his way through — it was far too dense, even for a professional hockey player, nor asking to pass by all those people — he might deal with talking to reporters nearly every day, but his social anxiety still ran high and in this moment was simply implacable. There was no way he would make it. 

Then, a miracle happened. 

_“DROP!”_

_“Driver, roll up the partition, please…”_

Jack might still have been hopeless when it came to pop culture, but he had spent too much time as Bitty’s boyfriend _not_ to instantly know that song, and exactly what to expect when it came on. At that point, it was just a matter of time. 

By the time Beyoncé was singing about taking forty-five minutes to get all dressed up (which was even longer than usual) a hole had formed in the center of the floor as the crowd moved to the sides of the room. Jack’s height allowed him to see over the heads, and just as he had expected, there was Bitty at the center of the circle. And he was capital-D _Dancing._

Jack swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Bitty looked so beautiful. Sure, he was dancing in the lewdest way (and it was nothing Jack hadn’t seen before), but the sensuality that seemed to radiate off of him truly only added to the effect. His blond hair gleaming in the low light and his happy, almost-serene expression were breath-taking enough, but the way he was moving his hips combined with those things to make Jack feel a veritable storm of emotions. He was enthralled. He was in love. He was turned on. He was overjoyed that that gorgeous boy doing those suggestive moves in the center of that cheering circle was all his. 

Then Bitty’s eyes opened and landed on his, and Bitty grinned at him. It was the sexiest thing Jack had ever seen. Then, suddenly, Bitty dropped into a squat, hands above his head, as the song ended. Jack hadn’t been paying attention to the music — he was concentrated solely on Eric. The mass around Bitty cheered and clapped and whistled, but his eyes stayed squarely on Jack’s. 

As the next song began and the crowd surged back in, Bitty managed to push his way out to the edge of the floor and towards Jack. As soon as he was free of the mass, he leapt into Jack’s arms and Jack caught him and held onto him as Bitty wrapped his legs around Jack’s waist and they stayed like that for a long while. Jack breathed in Bitty’s scent and realized once again how much he had missed it. 

After a long moment Bitty pulled away and got to his feet, but only to go straight back in for a deep kiss, bursting with feeling that just couldn’t be properly expressed over Skype. They melted further into each other and when Bitty opened his mouth Jack pushed his tongue in as he stepped backwards so that he was standing against the wall, pressing Bitty into himself. Time seemed to stop and they just stayed like that, basking in each other’s presence. 

Eventually, Bitty pulled away. 

“Hi,” he said, grinning again. 

“Hi,” Jack responded. “I missed you.” 

“I missed you, too. Lord, I’ve wanted to kiss you like that for months.” 

“Me, too,” Jack grinned back at him. “That was quite the dance you did.” 

“You like it?” Bitty bit his lip. “I hoped you would. I picked the song especially for you.” 

“As a matter of fact,” Jack said, “I loved it. I was wondering… if you could show me again? Maybe, upstairs?” 

“ _Mr. Zimmermann_ ,” Bitty chuckled. “What exactly are you suggesting?” 

“Just that I think you’re very good at… dancing.” 

Bitty laughed, and Jack smiled, too, holding his boy tighter. He honestly had no idea how he’d gotten so lucky. 

“Well, then,” Bitty said finally, speaking a little more quietly in way that made Jack wild. “I do believe that can be arranged.” He offered his hand. 

“Wonderful,” Jack smiled as he took it and allowed Bitty to lead him toward the stairs. 

“Bitty!” Chowder cried, running towards them and dampening the mood, a little frantic. “Nursey’s — Hi, Jack — Nursey’s throwing up and there are no— and Whiskey’s up there with him now and there are no more water bottles in the cooler and Lardo doesn’t know where they are. Where do we keep them?” 

Bitty hesitated a fraction of a moment, and then said “I’ll show you where they are.” He turned to Jack, and said quietly “sorry babe.” 

“You do what you need to do,” Jack replied, equally softly. “I can wait.” 

Bitty gave him a look of such warmth and gratitude as he began to move away with Chowder. 

“I love you,” Jack called after him. He hadn't planned to say it. They had been out for more than a month, but it was the first time he had said it in public, if the Haus counted as such. He had just felt the need to make sure Bitty knew. 

Bitty turned to look at him, first with surprise, then with such pure and intense affection it made Jack glow inside. 

“I love you, too, Jack,” Bitty said, and then once again turned to move away. 

Jack wore an enormous smile as he watched his boyfriend go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to alfredvonkrolock for being an awesome beta reader!
> 
> Title from "Ring Off" by Beyonce.  
> The song Bitty dances to is "Partition", also by Beyonce.
> 
> What can I say? I love these dweebs and I just couldn't stand not having a work in the fandom. Because I ship literally everybody, I just wanted to have a situation where everyone was happy. Now look what happened.
> 
> I hope you liked it!


End file.
